Monday, September 14, 2009

A Good Weekend!

A few days ago I showed you a peek at my latest project here. This weekend I began work on the body of the quilt using my favorite new tool, Stitching Lines. They are SO easy to use and so accurate, not to mention the fact that you don't have to spend time drawing lines on your fabric! The quilt calls for 84 hourglass blocks which is a lot of half square triangles! Here is the first step - a light or medium square placed right sides together with a dark square. I always oversize my squares so I can square them up later. Stitching Lines are placed on one side with the dark line centered on the diagonal. You sew on the dotted line, 1/4 " from either side of the center line. I shorten my stitch length a tad so the paper tears easier.

After the paper is torn away, you cut between each stitched line to get your HST's.Then you pair up different HST's and repeat the first step using Stitching Lines.After I've cut them apart, squared them up and pressed, here are some of my hourglass blocks! Visit Mary, the inventor of Stitching Lines, at her blogfor more tips on using this great product! Mr. Squash decided his back was feeling much better, so we took advantage of a beautiful Saturday and went fly fishing -- first time in a couple of months! Here he is below casting into a lovely deep pocket.Click on the photo below and you can get an idea of how quickly the colors are changing! In fact, I think the reds and oranges got deeper as the day wore on!Toward the end of the day we separated - I went back the way we came to retrieve my jacket which I had taken off and hidden when it got warmer as well as the car and picked up Mr. Squash further down the road. On my way back up the river, I cast into a spot where Mr. Squash had earlier gotten a fish on, but it got off before he landed it. So as not to be accused of an "alleged fish", I took aphoto of the little guy who apparently liked my Adams Parachute fly better than the earlier nymph! Of course I put him back in the river so he could grow much larger!

14 comments:

Isn't it great all the gadgets we quilters can use to make quilting easier and faster.What a beautiful day to fish. I clicked on the link for the fly. Do you two make your own flys too?Glad to see Mr. S is getting to do what he loves.

Candace, What a beautiful place to spend the day. Makes me want to move north. Thanks for the mention of Stitching Lines. While you were making quarter square triangles, I spent the weekend making flying geese rectangles!

Those stitching lines look right up my alley. I when ahead and ordered some and linked you back to my blog (I hope that wasn't rude of me!) hee! Kanga was the one that did it really. You know how she is.

I'm happy to see the outdoor fishing photos, too. What a soothing day to go cast your line my friend. I love how cute you are with that spot where Mr. Squash was but lost one. then you, you actually won for "catch & release of the day" (in my book).

That is the first time I've heard of Stitching Lines. The blocks you have a darling...I could easily see I'm going to LOVE this one!!!Boy do I wish to fish with you! The area is just gorgeous and I even chuckled with the photo of the fish you caught....kind of goes with that "it was this big" story! Like your proof!

Your hour glass blocks are perfect and the fabric combinations are so pretty!I bet Mr. Squash is feeling a lot better after the fly rod gymnastics and fresh air. Good for you to catch that fish he couldn't catch!

Hee hee with cameras "the one that got away" tales are going to become less and less.

Beautiful colours! I love Autumn.

That is a neat way of making the blocks. I've done 1/2 blocks where you cut say 3 7/8 draw a diagonal line then saw 1/4 " either side of the line to square up to make 2x 3 1/2" blocks. I do like this method as it makes little waste.